Edge of town, near the sandy beach that stretches for miles. Here, in an area of wasteland frequented by alcoholics, wastrels, drug addicts, homeless people, rats and stray cats, stands an old door, propped up against bricks. A white door, almost-new door, what-is-it-doing here door. Not a door, Tom says, a portal. To another world. […]

And you’re happy to work? she asked, repeating my phrase back to me. Yes, I said. I’ll be coming from a competition and just want to take a week somewhere quiet before classes start again. What kind of competition? I hoped my impatience didn’t carry down the line. Freediving, I said. She gave something like […]

13.9 It was always the spring or the autumn when the signal came – something to do with the lengthening of days or nights, and the drawing in and tightening of air that came with the change of seasons. Dr Winterburn wondered if everybody felt this dreamy restlessness at such times, or was it just […]

Georgia Leland had forgotten to water her indoor garden and the leaves were fading from green to brown. Perched on a wide wooden windowsill, exposed to the bright Kansas sun, her stem-and-leaf children yawned lazily and stretched out, searching for drink. It was the longest they’d gone without it – six days, six long days […]

The afternoon sun hit the terrace at a one hundred and thirty-five-degree angle. The shadow cast on the wall by a figure about halfway through a yoga routine suddenly straightened up and stood motionless, silently observing. The figure continued with its routine, oblivious, until, reaching the floor sequence, it abruptly stopped mid-pose and turned its […]

Bronwen Griffiths is the author of two novels, A Bird in the House (2014) and Here Casts No Shadow (2018), plus two collections of flash fiction, Not Here, Not Us – Stories of Syria (2016) and Listen with Mother (2019). Her work has been shortlisted and longlisted for a number of prizes, including the Bath […]

Hailing from Aotearoa, New Zealand, Sam Reese is an insatiable traveller who is currently writing and teaching in the UK. An award-winning short story writer, his first collection, Come the Tide, was published in 2019 with Platypus Press, and his stories have appeared in Headland, Storgy, Brittle Star, Azure, Wildness, Iceberg Tales, Failbetter, and Here […]

Max Dunbar lives in West Yorkshire. He began writing very young, but was almost thirty before he wrote anything worth reading. He is a short form raconteur and longlister.   Q: Do you have a lucky writing talisman? If so, what is it? A: Tea, wine and cigarettes work well for me.   Q: Do […]

Makenzie Marshall was born and raised in a small town in Missouri and since meeting her Welsh husband has spent her time stretched between Britain and the US. The couple moved to Ireland for a year in 2017–2018, where Makenzie wrote Nothing Grows from Pomegranate Seeds. In 2018, she returned to the US and finally […]

Özgür Uyanık’s debut novel, Conception, will be published by Fairlight Books in May 2020. Özgür is a writer and filmmaker whose family emigrated from Turkey to the UK in 1980. After graduating from the University of Kent at Canterbury, where he studied Communications and Image Studies, Özgür started a career in the film industry working […]